As the title suggests, the field test for Pokémon GO is coming to the United States! Niantic recently updated their blog to include this information.
From the blog:
It’s getting closer. It’s been sort of like making a big meal for your friends or family. We have been sweating the details in the kitchen and now we are anxious and excited to share our creation with you.
Some of you have been in the kitchen with us. You’ve have done a great job of guiding us so far. Across Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Pokémon GO field testers have been collecting and battling with impressive regularity and we’re learning a lot from them. And today, we’re expanding that field test to the United States to get more feedback to improve the game.
Some more information from the blog post:
- Incubators are being introduced into the field test, allowing assistance to hatching Pokemon Eggs obtained at PokeStops
- Trainers can now attack enemy Gyms together.
Another rather interesting tidbit in the blog is a challenge issued by Niantic to the field testers:
Fun fact – After many hours of field test gameplay, the Venusaur hasn’t been spotted yet. Who will be the first field tester who catches or evolves their Bulbasaurs or Ivysaurs into Venusaur? There’s much to explore and many Pokémon to find! 🙂
“Catch many Pokémon of the same type to evolve them.”
Source: Link
Why has FG been so quiet about Pokémon GO?
We’ve received a ton of community feedback asking why we aren’t posting more about Pokémon GO. While leaks are rampant, we’d like to keep our relationship with Niantic, The Pokémon Company, and Nintendo in good standing. We initially did an APK teardown of the first leaked APK, though did not consider what that meant for those under NDA, or how it might negatively impact our relationships with the above companies. For those that do not know, many of those that have leaked have been banned from the field test. There have also been reports of subsequent Ingress account bans. Niantic CEO, John Hanke, reached out to us kindly asking we remove our first APK teardown, and urged us not share material from a closed NDA test environment going forward. That being the case, our team has decided to only report on public knowledge, and will not continue the teardown series for this game until it is out of the closed test requiring NDA.